1754 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1754.

Events

• January 28 – Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, coins the word serendipity (from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip).
• March 2 – Riot at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Thomas Sheridan, the manager, resigns, and leaves Ireland on September 15 for London where his wife Frances Sheridan meets Samuel Richardson.
• Élie Catherine Fréron's journal Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps is replaced by his Année littéraire.

New books

Fiction

• Jane Collier and Sarah Fielding – The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable
• Mary Davys – The Reformed Coquet; or Memoirs of Amoranda
• Henry Fielding – The Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great (enlarged and expanded from the Miscellanies of 1743)
• Solomon Gessner – Daphnis
• Sarah Scott:
  • Agreeable Ugliness
  • A Journey Through Every Stage of Life
• John Shebbeare – The Marriage Act

Poetry

Main article: 1754 in poetry

• Thomas Cooke – An Ode on Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture
• John Duncombe – The Feminiad
• Henry Jones – The Relief
• William Whitehead – Poems

Non-fiction

• Anonymous – Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa and Pamela
• Thomas Birch – Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
• Charles Bonnet – Essai de psychologie
• John Gilbert Cooper – Letters Concerning Taste
• John Douglas – Letter on the Criterion of Miracles
• John Gillies – Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Period of the Success of the Gospel
• Zachary Grey – Critical, Historical, and Explanatory Notes on Shakespeare
• Benjamin Hoadly – Sixteen Sermons
• David Hume – The History of England (volume 1)
• William Law – The Second Part of the Spirit of Love
• Isaac Newton (died 1727) – An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (written 1690)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Discourse on Inequality
• Henry St. John – Philosophical Works
• Jonathan Swift
  • Brotherly Love
  • The Works of Jonathan Swift (the Hawkesworth edition)
• William Warburton – A View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy
• Thomas Warton – Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser

Drama

• David Garrick – Catharine and Petruchio (adapted from The Taming of the Shrew)
• John Gay – The Rehearsal at Goatham
• Macnamara Morgan:
  • Philoclea (from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia)
  • The Sheep-Shearing, or Florizel and Perdita (a farce adapted from The Winter's Tale)
• Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon – Le Triumvirat

Births

• March 24 – Joel Barlow, American poet and diplomat (died 1812)
• May 23 – William Drennan, Irish physician, poet, radical and educationalist (died 1820)
• July 11 – Thomas Bowdler, English editor (died 1825)
• August 2 – Lady Charlotte Murray, English writer and botanist (died 1808)
• October 13 – Frances Jacson, English novelist (died 1842)
• December 24 – George Crabbe, English poet (died 1832)

Deaths

• January 11 – Wu Jingzi, Chinese scholar and novelist (born 1701)
• January 28 – Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian philosopher, historian and playwright (born 1684)
• April 2 – Thomas Carte, English historian (born 1686)
• April 9 – Christian Wolff, German philosopher (born 1679)
• October 8 – Henry Fielding English novelist (born 1707)
• November 12 – Robert Morris, English architect and writer on architecture (born 1703)
• Probable year of death – Francis Coventry, English novelist and cleric (born 1725)